What good is it to gain the whole world but to lose my soul?  This spiritual precept may be simple, but somehow we all seem to end up as prodigals.  How easy it is, indeed, to go after a career at the expense of our vocation.  How easy it is to hang out with the rich and famous at the expense of our friends.  How easy it is to pursue the good-looking at the expense of our true love.   How easy it is to build a dream house at the expense of our home.  Such decisions happen in an instant, and before we know it, these ideas start to occupy our core and center as we blindly, and tragically, lose touch with ourselves.  Let’s therefore double-down on the spiritual life.  Let’s beg for the grace to convert our clasping hands into open palms.  Let’s get comfortable with being little and simple.  Let’s learn to celebrate the whole world and relinquish the need to possess anything ever again.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” is the famous opening line of the Song of Songs.  While these words may appear to just be the provocative beginning to a lengthy erotic poem, they have been the focus of countless commentaries by mystics and scholars throughout the ages.  All created things, indeed, were kissed to life by the divine mouth which simply spoke light and seas and rivers and stars into existence.  Our first ancestor, in the garden, came into consciousness with the Lord literally kissing his face (Gen 2:7).  Our very salvation is described as a marriage feast of lovers! (Rev 19:7)  Let’s therefore avoid the sin of betraying our master with impulsive, ill-timed, fearful, clingy, and greedy kisses (Mt 26:49) that drive us further and further apart.  Let’s get comfortable going low and allowing our lips to touch, and in fact, anoint our beloved’s feet (Lk 7:38).  In this act of vulnerability, we shall discover the joy of mutuality that transforms a simple kiss into a partnership.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

My third grade teacher was a religious sister who had a reputation for being tough in class.  She demanded a lot from her students and insisted on a disciplined classroom.  We were in the chapel for Mass one day, and I noticed that she had a tape recorder next to her in the pew.  When we got back to class, one of my classmates asked her about it.  She told us that it was to record us singing, because she thought our voices were beautiful and wanted to listen to us in the evenings.  Even as a child, this was a very humbling and powerful experience for me.  It taught me about the mystery of the human person and the reality of grace.  How easy it is, indeed, to think that the judgments we make about other people are final, instead of the starting point for a deeper and more enduring understanding that is revealed in time.  Deliver me, Lord, from the temptation to draw conclusions about another person’s soul.  Save me from the sin of pride that keeps me from communion.  Never let me think that I could ever speak the last word about another human heart.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.